


Did My Conscience Die With Me?

by khilari



Category: Watchmen (Comic)
Genre: Kink Meme, Other, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-09
Updated: 2010-03-09
Packaged: 2017-10-07 20:05:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/khilari/pseuds/khilari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rorschach's ghost possesses Laurie for the chance to be with Daniel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Did My Conscience Die With Me?

It's cold. Walter didn't expect to be cold once he was dead. He didn't expect to be anything. Now, a drifting disembodied consciousness, he wonders if he was right and this is what being nothing feels like. There are things he should do, but he can't quite remember what they are. Something terrible happened, he needs to, needs to…But the thought trails off and leaves him grasping at nothing, just another eddy in the Antarctic air. He only wishes he weren't so cold.

*

The sea is filled with faces, green and trailing seaweed in their lank hair. All the sailors in all the centuries who have drowned have their spirits held in the ocean's salt embrace. They moan and reach for him, but he did not die at sea and he owes them nothing. A tiny child in a Victorian dress reaches up from among the men, not only sailors die at sea. Walter stops, reaches down so his own transparent hand can close around hers. The wind whisks him away from her, he's left with her sharp despairing wail in his ears and wet fingerprints on his wrist.

*

There are spirits around New York as well, although most of them are faded away to wisps. If he looks in the right way their fading looks like perspective, they might be vanishing or only moving away from him. The other spirit is so large, so intertwined with everything around him he almost misses it at first. The squid, barely alive before it died, fills the air with ghostly tentacles reeking of confusion and loss. Walter tries to avoid it, its touch is stinging cold.

This is where he should be, and there's something he should do but he can't remember. Drifts, aimless and meaningless, around the shells of buildings.

*

When he sees them he feels the shocking warmth of familiarity, the coldness inside him edged slightly away. They shouldn't be blonde, the man's moustache is terrible, but he knows them. Watches them dole out soup to the city's survivors, watches them dig and move rubble. Always they do what they can, and if kindness lacks the sharp edge of goodness it's still a beacon in the damaged city.

Walter follows them, afraid to lose them when their presence gives him that little spark of purpose in the dark. It's not until the night they dress up he truly knows them.

Nite Owl, Daniel. Confident and good as he drives away the looters and the dealers, the predators who move in on the tide of chaos. Silk Spectre, although she's in leather now and smiling like a knife, moves beside him. Walter hovers, follows them, at first elated by their purpose and courage.

The elation wears off, leaving something hollow. Daniel is his partner, always was. The memories of that slide back first, then other memories behind them. Rejection, years alone because Daniel quit. And now he's dead and gone Daniel is back on the streets, beside a woman. They move together, Daniel leaving space for her when he moves. That space used to be for him.

Then, patrol over, they go home. She, Silk Spectre, Laurel Juspeczyk, unfastens Daniel's belt and kisses his lips. Daniel smiles, slides his hands up under her shirt and her head drifts back, mouth opening.

It's not fair, nothing has ever been fair, but this least of all. That she has everything he ever wanted without even trying. He presses closer, snarling, trying to stop it. Slaps her and watches his hand sink through her skin.

*

Daniel's hands are so warm on his waist, colours have lost their muted edge and reality is such a welcome relief that he could cry. Walter smiles uncertainly at Daniel, reaches up to cup his face with one hand. His partner, his friend.

'Laurie? Are you okay?' asks Daniel, concern creases his face around the goggles.

Walter suddenly realises where he is, whose body he inhabits. He can sense Laurel's presence faintly, pushed down into the depths of herself put to sleep and wrapped around with briars. The body feels unfamiliar, female of course and he feels the breasts and the wetness between his legs with faint queasiness, but also strong. Not scarred, not starved, not old and neglected. The feeling of simple health is almost overwhelming.

And then he realises the other thing. Daniel doesn't know. Laurel took everything he wanted, took Daniel, and he can take him back. They can be partners, lovers, and as long as Daniel never knows it's him they can be happy. Laurel, beautiful, pampered and lucky, is never rejected. Now it's his turn.

'Fine, Daniel,' he says, and kisses his partner's lips.

*

At first he thinks it's working, the kissing deepens and he's fighting panic because Laurel wouldn't panic and he's trying to disguise the fact that he doesn't know what he's doing. At first it seems as if he's pulled it off, but then Daniel holds his shoulders, gently pushes him back.

'What are our fake identities now?' he asks.

'Odd question to ask now,' says Walter. 'Irrelevant.'

'You don't know, do you?' says Daniel. The goggles are off now, but his expression is completely unreadable.

'What are you talking about, Daniel? Of course I know.' He tries to sound annoyed rather than panicky, can't he even fool Daniel for an hour? The universe has never done him any favours, but won't it even allow him this?

'Laurie never calls me Daniel,' whispers Daniel, hands tighten on Walter's shoulders squeezing convulsively. 'Rorschach.'

And Walter stares, frozen by panic as he waits for Daniel to push him away. To demand he leave Laurel's body, call him out as the worst kind of thief. But…

'I've missed you,' says Daniel, quiet and soft, and this kiss is meant only for Walter.

*

The bed isn't big, there's nothing luxurious about the way Daniel lives now, but it's warm and soft and the cold of the Antarctic is finally leaching out of Walter's mind. This body isn't his but it feels like his, or maybe it feels better because it isn't. Not him, not open and vulnerable, and even if Daniel knows it's him this is still a mask between them.

Daniel's lips on his breast are warm, so warm, and he can't help arching up and moaning. Daniel licks down to his belly button, hand fondling his breast in place of lips. His hair catches under Daniel's hand as he shifts his weight, a sharp tug, and Walter shifts to ease the pull against his scalp. Daniel's hands slide down to cup his ass, so shocking for another man to touch him there, and before Walter can decide whether he likes it or not Daniel's tongue is inside him.

So hot, a furnace inside him, wet and hot between his legs. Pleasure verging on pain as it tips him trembling towards the brink. Daniel's hand running up under his leg, lightly tickling sensitive skin, and he's gasping losing himself again. Losing himself in Daniel.

Daniel moves up his body awkwardly, holding himself carefully away until he finds the right position. Slides himself in. Walter gasps, turns away and bites his lip. This is what men did to his mother, what he has never done and now it is being done to him.

'Are you okay?' asks Daniel. His voice is a close rumble, heard through touching chests, and Walter nods. He's dead, too many chances wasted already. A ghost himself and ready, more than ready, to let go of the ghosts of his past.

They move together, finding their rhythm and losing it, but they are partners and they find the place they always have where bodies move in unison and words are never needed. They move like hunters, heroes, sharp and strong even here.

Walter comes with a sharp wail, so much to feel and so many fears to discard. Afterwards he sleeps.

*

Waking is hard, he feels strange and gluey from sleeping too deeply, and for a moment can't remember where he is. Laurel's long shapely legs remind him as he swings them out of the bed and the reality of what he has done hits him a moment later.

Leaning over the toilet and heaving up food he didn't eat he faces the knowledge that what he did, what Daniel did, was rape. They had no right to use Laurel as they did, wasted all their own chances to be together and made her pay the price. It doesn't matter that she was sleeping with Daniel anyway, doesn't matter that he hasn't hurt her, what he took he took without consent. In all his ephemeral drifting he had somehow forgotten right and wrong.

Daniel is waking up, the faint metallic noise of bed springs and a yawn can be heard, and Walter stands up shivering with cold. There's not a chance he can face Daniel now. If Daniel doesn't hate him for what they did he will hate Daniel for not understanding it was wrong.

Daniel and Laurel have each other, there's nothing for him here.

*

When Laurel wakes on the bathroom floor she will see a note on the bathroom mirror, written in red lipstick on silver glass.

_So sorry, Laurel .][._


End file.
